Internal Family Systems (IFS) Explained: How Our Parts Help Us Heal

My father was a prominent medical researcher, and I was a big disappointment to him. So he could go into rages and give me messages about how lazy I was or how worthless I was. Could be very, very loving, otherwise, it was confusing. He had set me up on the psych unit in the hospital. I thought there's something wrong with this picture in terms of the therapy. That gave me the one piece of direction that I had into see if there's something that could improve the state of psychotherapy. For about 20 years, I worked with complex PTSD, tortured on a daily basis, kind of clients. That's when I thought this is a big deal.

And this could change everything.

Every part of ourselves is something positive.

It only makes sense that we wouldn't be born with something that wasn't there to help us. You've been experimenting with psychedelics in combination with IFS. Psychedelics put your managers to sleep. So that's the power of it. You're much better than you think you are. That there is this essence inside of you. It's pure goodness.

Welcome to the Living a Life and Balance podcast. My name is Abdullah Bulad. I'm the founder and CEO of the Balance Rehab Clinic. My guest today is Dr. Richard Schwartz. He's the creator of internal family systems called IFS, one of the most widely adopted therapeutic models of the past four decades. He's the author of multiple books, including the widely read No Bad Parts. I hope you will enjoy. Dick? Jillan? What motivated you to do what you do today?

So that's a big question. I uh grew up in a family. I was one of six boys, I'm the oldest of six boys. My father was a prominent medical researcher, head of a big hospital in Chicago, and wanted me to be that. And I was a big disappointment to him because I didn't have good grades. I think I was undiagnosed ADHD.

Okay.

Still a little bit of that, a lot better, but um and uh that was very frustrating to him. And three of my brothers are physician researchers, and and uh he also I think was traumatized during World War II. And so he could go into rages and uh spank us, quote unquote, and and uh give me messages about how lazy I was or how worthless I was.

But he was also the of the two parents for me, the warm one, and could be very, very loving otherwise and gave me many gifts, so it's confusing.

Okay.

But I came out of my family with a lot of worthlessness and uh uh what ultimately turned out to be a big drive to prove him wrong and to to create something of value, and also have the Jewish legacy burden of needing to justify your existence and and do something for humanity. So coming out of college, I had no real talents, no direction. But I had during college, he had set me up on the psych unit at the hospital, the adolescent unit.

I wasn't that much older than them, so I would get very close to them. And I would hear from them about their therapy sessions, which were very psychoanalytic back in those days. So this is this is in the 70s, actually. And uh they sounded ridiculous to me. And then I would be in the day room and the families would come to visit, and I would see how the families would brutalize this kid for shaming them and so on. I thought there's something wrong with this picture in terms of the therapy. And so that gave me the one piece of direction that I had in my mind, which was to see if there's something that could improve the state of psychotherapy.

So I started looking into programs, and uh I was lucky because it was right at the cusp of when family therapy was becoming very radically different from traditional uh psychotherapy. So I did a PhD in fan Maryland family therapy, and uh I I thought I'd found my redemption. I found what would make my father proud, finally. And then I got a job in a family therapy training program in Chicago, and uh decided to prove that family therapy was the best, and did an outcome study with a bunch of kids who had bulimia and their families and found that it didn't work.

And so that was a huge disappointment, but it also because I I started asking these kids why do you keep doing this, even though your parents now like each other and you don't have to take care of them this way and distract, and they started talking this language of parts. So then I got intrigued by by that phenomenon.

The whole process of studying and going, being in a clinical environment was primarily to prove your father, or was there any anything else you in you get intrigued into being in that field?

You know, I was good at it. I was uh Obviously, yeah. Good listener. I, you know, I had um some social skills, so I didn't have any other talents. So I you know, I was an athlete, but yeah, you can't make a living doing that.

And so do you think we are born with a certain talent, or we we just develop it as we grow up and experience and uh engage with the world? I think it's kind of both.

You know, we're we're born with what I call self, which is this essence inside that has all these great qualities for most anything. Uh these C-word qualities, that's call them. And then that gets covered over by these parts of us and the what I call the burdens they carry. So as you do this work, you become more and more, you get more and more access to those qualities, and they don't come with specific trade skills, but uh they those qualities can be applied to most anything.

You you mentioned your father was tough on you, like had a lot of expectations for you to perform, but being also uh caring and loving, maybe also being tough because of the loving side as well.

Could be.

Um what about your mother? How what kind of role did she play?

So my mother is a complicated story. So she really wanted to have a kid, and I was the firstborn. And for the first two years, I was really doted on, I think, by her. Yeah. And then my brother came when I was two and a half.

Okay.

And the family story was Dick can really carry a grudge because it's true, I wouldn't hug or kiss my mother again until I left for college. And uh I sort of bought that story, and and there's some truth to it. And I think I had a legacy, what I call a legacy burden of pouting from my grandfather, but uh I also watched my mother react when when my uh grandkids would reject her, and she would have this big hurt reaction.

So I think it was a combination, but anyway, um I didn't have that kind of attachment connection to my mother. Okay. Yeah.

So you needed to be to grow up and to be by yourself.

Uh yeah, I felt pretty lonely very quickly growing up. I was kind of shy. Wasn't uh yeah, wasn't terribly outgoing and you know, just had a lot of uh worthless feelings that I would try to work out through sports and things like that. Okay.

Do you think what you have experienced, like uh this lack of connection or or less intensive connection with your mother or your parents, uh cause that you have become more a sensitive person in general? Well, not at first.

So um I had a part that didn't care much about people and could keep my heart closed. Yeah. And uh when I stumbled onto this work and and started getting interested in this part stuff and started to try to bring it to the world, I was, like I said, pretty shy. So standing in front of a group and talking about it was really scary.

Yeah.

But I could also rely on that part that didn't give a shit about what people thought. And at the time I was in this family therapy training program in a department of psychiatry at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And uh it was they were very hostile to IFS, to what I was developing. And yet they would invite me to present at grand rounds and things like that, and then attack me when I did. And so I really had to rely on that part that blocked my heart and protected me in that way.

And it was uh so it was a combination of that part and then the part that wanted to prove to my father that I was valuable.

Yeah.

And they served me well getting through all of that. But when I became the leader of a community or, you know, husband and so on, they got in the way a lot. And I was lucky I had people who could tell me about it and tell me you gotta do something about this.

Did did you get at some point in your life this approval you were looking for as a child?

Yeah. You know, it was uh interestingly, after I had worked it out so I didn't need it in the same way. But yeah, my father uh actually came to really value what I was doing. And okay, yeah, and he was helped by it too.

So at first you went into family therapy, like family systems, trying to understand them. How would you how would you um tell the family you grow up within uh from what you know today, how would you have worked with them?

I would have uh started with the relationship between my father and me. And uh I would have spent time working with the parts of my father that was so hard on me as a therapist while I was watching as as a son. Yes. And um and then I would also give me the space to talk about the impact of that on myself. So I mean I'm selfishly just thinking of that relationship, but I I had another brother, I have five brothers, so um most of my other brothers got a pass in terms of my that part of my father.

And then one other brother was a scapegoat too, and suffered from it. So I would also focus on that relationship.

And with your mother or with another system?

Yeah, um, you know, I think they had a decent marriage, it seemed like. Uh so in contrast, other families I would work with, it wasn't like we had to work with the marriage first and get them to support each other. They did that pretty well.

Yeah.

And also I would try to set it up where I could say some things to my mother about what it was like to be so disconnected and and how uh I think part of the hardest thing was to watch her be very close with my brothers. Uh, even though I was the one pushing her away, I think she would have loved it if I would embrace her.

Okay.

It was still very hard to watch her be so playful with them and me not being able to do that.

And when was the first time you you tried you got into understanding the different parts uh of yourself and trying to understand developing uh the model you you have created?

I think it was about 1980 that I did this outcome study. And somewhere after that, I started asking these kids why they binged, kept binging and purging. And they talked this language of parts, which was pretty foreign to me at the time. And uh so as I listened to that, I thought, this is really interesting because they're talking about these things as if they're real, as if they have autonomy and they have relationships with each other, and they can take over and make them do things they don't want to do.

And at first I got scared, like maybe they're they have multiple personality disorder, which was the term at the time.

Right.

Uh, and then I noticed that I have them too. And some of mine are as extreme as some of theirs in some ways. And so then I calmed down and I just started to get curious. And I was I had a couple advantages. One is because I was in family therapy, I hadn't studied interpsychic process. So I didn't have a lot of presumptions about what when they would say things, I didn't put that into some category. So I had to have what the Buddhists call beginner's mind.

I had to just keep trying to learn from my clients. And then the second advantage was systems thinking, which was I was steeped in from family therapy. And so I was very interested not only in just one individual part, but how did they operate as a system?

Yes.

And I think that's one of the big contributions of IFS.

What are the similarities between, let's say, the the family therapy and the IFS? Because I can imagine within family therapy, you recognize the system and uh not just the individuals, but also the interaction between uh the individuals. It gets very complicated if I think about okay, everyone has different parts, even. And then within a system, this is like a web net, which uh can be very, very complex at uh at some points.

And it was overwhelming at first, yeah, because they you know, each of these clients that I was learning from would talk about 10, 15 different parts. And and so I became very interested in are there commonalities and can I make a map of the system? And it turned out there were. And again, as a systems thinker, I'm looking for distinctions among them. And the big distinction that leaped out immediately was between parts that before they were hurt were these inner children that we love because they give us all kinds of joy and playfulness and creativity and connection.

But they're the most sensitive parts of us, so they get hurt the most.

Yes.

And so when they get hurt, we don't want anything to do with them anymore because they make us feel those feelings. And they can pull us back into the scenes they're stuck in. So they get locked up. So I came to call those the exiles.

Yeah.

And then when you have a lot of exiles, you have to have a lot of protectors to keep them contained and to protect them from getting hurt again. And so I could see that a bunch of the like the bulimic part and the critic and a lot of these other parts were really just trying to keep all this contained.

Yes.

And so protectors in exile became the big distinction. It's held up all these years as the primary distinction.

Where like the eating disorders, the bulimic, um, like the primary source where you were motivated or inspired to developing this?

Or have you had also other types of uh it started with eating disorders, and then I was also this institute was on the west side of Chicago, so I was working with kids from the street and uh seeing what their inner systems were like, and uh I was having a lot of luck both with both populations. And then I started to wonder, because I was finding that these parts weren't what they seemed, that uh, for example, the critic, if I got my client curious about it, would initially be very hard on them, but if they stayed curious, kept asking what it was afraid would happen if it didn't keep yelling at it, calling them names, it would admit that it was trying to protect them in some way.

And that shift in understanding it as a protector really made a different relationship with the critic and made it soften a lot. And we could do a similar thing with the binging part, and it so all these parts were turning out not to be what they seemed, which again was an overlay with family therapy because in families, kids are forced out of their naturally valuable roles or naturally valuable states into roles that can be very extreme. And if you can reorganize family relationships, the kids will be who they really are designed to be.

And it just was amazing that it turned out to be very parallel, that these parts were forced into roles that we could help them out of. And uh so I was very happy to see what we could do with that those populations, but and I was getting this inkling that maybe none of these parts are bad, that maybe there are no bad parts. But I needed to work with some other populations to really test that.

Okay.

And so I wound up consulting to a treatment center for sex offenders for a couple of years and went into prisons and um and worked with uh what's called borderline personality clients a lot more, recruited them. And lo and behold, you know, if you get curious about the part that molested a little kid, it will tell you its secret history of how it got forced into that role and how it hates the role, but it's stuck in there, and how we could help it out of that role.

Are there also other groups you you dived into and been working with?

Uh for about 20 years I worked with complex PTSD people who'd had tortured on a daily basis kind of clients. Some of them would be diagnosed with what's called DID now, multiple personality disorder in the past. Others borderline personality disorder, uh some some OCD clients. And again, I was really just trying to see could this work with that population too? Those clients actually taught me not just the model, but how to work with people.

Yeah.

How to work with my parts that would get triggered by what their stories are triggered by the parts of them that would come after me at times. And so uh they were great teachers of mine also. Does it work in any case? We've only done a few outcome studies that are uh that are what are thought of as legitimate. We there's a number of outcome studies that most of them are pilot, but there are uh only a handful of random randomly controlled outcome studies, randomized controlled outcome studies.

So I can't speak to I I don't want to overreach.

Yeah.

Anecdotally, um, I've had luck. Many people using IFS have had luck with lots and lots of different problems. So, but I I don't want to overstate it.

Yes. But it is all over the place. I mean, so many therapists and also in social media, there are thousands and probably tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands uh posts and information today out there. Uh how does it make you feel?

It's one of those things that uh when I first stumbled into it, and I not only did I see these parts aren't what they seem and they can transform, but also I could find this self in everybody, even the sex offenders, even the that that was the essence of people, it couldn't be damaged, and it's in everybody.

Yeah.

And it's just beneath the surface of these parts, so that when it they open space, it would pop out spontaneously. That's when I saw this is a big deal, and this could change everything. And I'm just an idiot. I'm like, at the time I was like a 33-year-old kid with a lot of my own parts, and and uh so I kept thinking, well, this is amazing. I hope the person comes along who can take it where it's supposed to go. And I'm still waiting for that person, really. But and this uh I mean it's great it's come this far.

Yeah, but I still see that huge potential to change many, many things in the on the planet. So I uh that's what keeps me gone. I I'm 76. I you know, could sit back and be really happy with what I've done. But I've I've still got that Jewish legacy burden. So yeah.

What what do you think about or you're mentioning like you want to do work which is still pending in the world? What what exactly would you wish to happen?

If we could change the paradigm for understanding the mind to this from the way it's ordinarily understood, and how to relate to these parts, not only would people change and heal some of their symptoms, but they would change the way they relate to each other.

Yes.

And I also see these what I call legacy burdens as driving so many conflicts in the world. And if people knew that there's a fairly easy way to unload those, so that because these legacy burdens really can change the way you see another person. Like they take over your eyes and you see the other person as an object. And so if we could do a collective legacy on burdenings, so that you know, I have these grandiose ideas about the potential impact, and you know, I probably won't get there in my lifetime, but how to overcome these legacy burdens?

I mean, you mentioned also with your Jewish background and generational trauma, probably as well, um, or most certainty. What how do you overcome these uh burdens? You want to try it?

Please. Okay. Do you have something that you think might be a legacy burden?

I mean, maybe a little background. I was born in Lebanon and uh it was war. I I grew up the first seven years in war, and my parents and my family moved to Switzerland, and I grew up in Switzerland. So maybe that helps.

Yeah. So is there a part of you still stuck back in the war, you think?

Or probably when I when I listen to the media, uh, which is out there when um conflict uh rearises again, it comes up. I mean, for many years and decades, I would say it did not affect me at all anymore, because I have my life, I have the different focus to to f follow what uh what lives and study and work brings at you.

You said for many decades it didn't. Yeah. And now it does, or it uh agitates a bit, yes, I must say. Yeah. Alright. So focus on that feeling and find it in your body, around your body. Yeah, probably in my stomach. And as you notice it there, how do you feel toward it?

Neutral. Uh kind of okay, I've been living with this now for so long. Could we get curious about it?

Are you are you open to getting curious about it? Yes. Focus your curiosity down here and just ask what it wants you to know. And don't think, just wait and see what comes.

I would say I'm blessed. I'm in a good position today. Uh but I I feel a lot of compassion to people who who are not in that in that region, probably.

So this down here, this agitated part, is trying to help you feel compassion for other people who are suffering? Is that what you're getting? I think that's that's the right direction, yeah. Okay.

So as you get that, how do you feel toward it? It's positive. It turns into something positive. Okay.

Yeah.

So maybe you let it know you value that, that you appreciate its efforts. Yeah. And just see how it reacts. You focus on it again and give it that message. See if there's a reaction.

It gives a feeling of uh yeah, I can do something about it. So it's encouraging you to do something about it, something like that? Or I have the opportunity to do something. I have uh agency to to do something.

Yeah. Um ask it if its agitation is related to trying to motivate you. Just ask that. Again, don't think, just wait and see what comes.

It's uh probably also having something to do with a bit of a history my parents forced to leave. Kind of, yeah, I cannot help myself or help them how they were feeling at that time. But I can do something probably for people who suffer today. That's right. Yeah.

And you were seven, did you say?

Yes.

Do you have a sense of that seven-year-old and what he went through? I have images. Have images. Do you want to work with him?

Okay.

Alright, so just focus on the image of him and see where you find him in your body around your body. Probably my legs. And how do you feel toward him as you notice it? A lot of compassion? Let him know, yeah. See how he reacts to your compassion. Feels cared cared about. Ask him if he ask him if he feels like you really get how hard that time was.

Or if you've tried to forget about it. Don't think. Wait for the answer.

For for a long time it was just uh buried somewhere. Yeah. Not present. Yeah. But but that's changed or it's still that way. I think that changed with the awareness and the work I do uh and and my my daily life.

Ask him if he feels like you really get how bad it was for him or not. Just ask that question. Yeah. He says yeah? Yes. Okay, good.

Good.

What was it like to do that?

Yes, it it felt in my case good because uh I can say I'm I'm stable today as a as a human being, I'm balanced, I have my own children, and and and try to be for them. Um I must say I had a lot of love. I feel a lot of love uh when I was a child, uh, but towards what happened, yeah. And as a child, you just live in the moment eventually. So, and then things go on and you never reflect, yeah, which comes much later.

This is what I often see as well. Yeah, yeah, but it felt good to address that.

Yeah. Well, it's clear you've done a lot of work because often when I would ask somebody, how do you feel toward this part of you? Uh, you'll get some extreme answer. Like I'm afraid of it, or I don't like it, it's weak, or something like that. But you immediately had compassion for both these parts. And that is what I call yourself. That's coming from yourself.

Yeah.

So yeah, no, interesting. Um, I think I think it's it's an important step to understand one's parts, um, or eventually also the coping mechanisms we develop uh in in in life with whatever comes up, right?

Yeah. And the what's called coping mechanisms generally are these parts, these protectors. Yeah. Yeah.

What are the major parts you you discovered in your work?

Again, I'm mainly talking about the major roles that these parts find themselves in, like these kids in a family. So again, uh there are protectors and exiles, but within the group of protectors, there are managers who are trying to manage your life so that you don't get hurt again. And they're trying to preempt anything that might trigger your exiles. So if you have this seven-year-old, and if you if if your system was afraid of feeling those feelings again, you would have manager parts that would want to never be in that position again, never have to leave a country, never, never be uh scared like that again.

And they would be working overtime to get you to the top of the heap and to have be in control all the time, things like that. Does that make sense?

Yes. Yes, those.

So these we call managers, some of them become critics because they yell at you to try and motivate you to do better, look better, achieve more. Um with some trauma survivors, the critics are really trying to tear down their confidence so they don't take any risks and they keep a low profile.

Yeah.

So those are but those are managers too. Just in general, the parts that are trying to keep you safe by preempting.

And you talk about every part of ourself is is is something positive.

It's it's hard to believe that. Um and I don't expect people to believe it unless they've tried it, but it also only makes sense that we wouldn't be born with something that wasn't there to help us. Yes. So for me, they're we're born with them, either manifest or dormant, and then they come with us through life. And if they weren't hurt, they would just be advisors or helpers in different ways. And that's we're trying to return them to that role. But when they get hurt, they start to get extreme and stuck in these roles.

So that would be managers, those are common manager roles. There are a bunch of others, I could name if you want. Okay. So again, most of us have a part that uh is worried about how we come across all the time and wants to be liked, and and uh is very sensitive to feedback that we're not doing well. Um so and and uh part that tries to take care of everybody that wasn't one of mine.

I I do it a lot more now than I used to. Uh but a lot of therapists and a lot of women have this massive caretaking part that doesn't let them take care of themselves. So that would be another one.

Yeah.

Um and all those managers have in common trying to keep the exiles from being triggered. Now there's another set of parts that goes into action immediately if the exile ever is triggered, because it's terrifying. It's like this these flames of raw emotion start to come out of your gut and overwhelm you and make you so you can't function. And so to deal with that emergency, there's other protectors who immediately go into action to get you higher than those flames or distract you till they burn themselves out, or douse them with some substance.

So I call those firefighters. There's lots of different kinds of firefighters.

So you said every part is a protector and is something positive in it. Can people some in some cases use it as a justification for what they do or how they behave?

Yeah, that's always a danger with the parts language that you know there's a part of me that did this or that did that, it wasn't me. Yeah. Which actually is true, but it also can be used that way.

There it seems then also lack of agency or responsibility taking towards people have accused the model of creating that.

It's actually the opposite. Because if you just think I did it, what can you do about that?

Yeah.

But if you think there's a part of me that did it, you can actually work with that part and help it see it doesn't have to do that anymore. And I'm I, you know, there's a lot of interest, for example, in IFS in the uh restorative justice world because you've worked with the perpetrator, and for them to be able to say, yeah, this part took over and made me do this, it's a lot easier for them to be honest about what happened.

Yeah.

And then there's direct guidelines for how to change that to so it doesn't happen anymore, which involve healing the exiles that it was reacting to a lot of the time. So while you think, you know, you it makes sense that you might think it reduces accountability, but it's it's really the opposite.

The process to unlock all these parts, um you you go you go through different sessions. Can you explain how how the therapeutic process exactly works here?

So we start out, I would ask questions like I asked you, and somebody tells me their story or tells me something about a problem they're having. And uh I was trained, as most therapists are to do reflective listening. So I'm feeding back what they're saying, but I'm adding the language of parts. So part of you maybe is stuck back when you were seven and got thrown out of Lebanon, and another part of you does this. Is that right? Another part does this. And most of the time people don't say, What are you talking about?

Because everybody uses that word. Part of me is glad to be here, another part of me. It's not the best word, it's kind of mechanical, but it's the the most common parlance word. So I don't get resistance to the language. And then as they as we go over a handful of parts that I've heard in their story, I'll say, is there one you want to get started with? Is there one you want to get to know better or change? And they pick one. And if I think it's an exile, then I'll say, we'll get to that one, but first I want to talk to parts that don't want us to go there or afraid to let us go there.

Because I learned the hard way that if you go to these exiled parts without permission from the ones that protect them, the protectors will attack the person or me or just not come back. So we always start with protector parts, and we get to know their fears about letting us go to these vulnerable places, and we address those fears. But I also tell them, we're not going without your permission.

Yes.

You're the boss. But if you let us open that door, we could we're not gonna grovel in that feeling. We're gonna help it unload. We're gonna help the part that carries that pain feel much better. And then you won't have to be so protective. So I've I've become what I call a hope merchant at that point. Okay. Selling hope for something different, even to these protective parts.

So creating first awareness on the protector part and then dive into the exiles.

When they give us permission, but if they give us permission, yeah.

Does IFS only work if if a person is reflective? And is every person reflective?

No. Many people are dominated by non-reflective parts, protectors. So um so and I worked with that population for a long time. So I got good at uh, you know, there's a way to talk to parts, even though you're not using the language. You just know you're talking to a protector.

Yeah.

And I would schmooze with it, I would get to know it, I would uh connect with it, and then I'd start using the language. Because there's a lot of clients, if you start using the language right away, I'll say, I don't know what you're talking about. What do you think? I'm crazy.

Yes.

But if I wait and they trust me and they feel connected to me, and then I bring it up and I'll say, and yeah, and this I've just heard from this critic. Does that have the critic inside of you? Would you like to do something with that? That piques their interest. Yeah. And uh, and there are a lot of people who are dominated by these rational parts, these thinking parts, that don't let them feel much in their bodies. I lived in Boston for 10 years, and that was most of the population.

Yes.

So I would have to honor those parts, but ask them to relax back and let us go to the places in the body where these other parts were. Okay. So, but we again with the rational parts. We don't do it if they don't want. Yeah. You know, if they if they're too afraid.

That's probably one side, those who are more rational, but I also can think about uh narcissistic personalities. Yeah, totally. How to work with these type of people using this uh IFS uh methodology.

Yeah. So again, I we won't I wouldn't introduce it until there was trust, and especially with a narcissistic person, trust that I'm not going to be judging them because they're so sensitive to any kind of judgment. And then that narcissistic part will take over again. Yeah. So I'm I'm can creating that kind of connection. And then usually they come in like narcissists don't usually come in on their own. They come in because their marriage is dying or there's some problem in their life. And the part of them that's so narcissistic is part of their problem.

Could it be seen also as part of the protectors?

Yeah, it's a protector. It's a different kind of protector, exactly. It's a manager.

Yeah.

And uh so I'd say, okay, I I get that your wife is an idiot and so on, why she threw you out of the house. But is there something to what she's been complaining about? And okay. Would you be open to getting to know the part of you that that wants everything that you want and isn't very sensitive to other people and needs a lot of validation all the time? And uh would you be open to and if if you are open, we can actually help that change.

We can we can get you out of that place, and then your wife will like you again eventually.

It's um what you're describing right now is a therapeutic process. But isn't it also often now the case of people who read a book or try to use an app or whatever way, questionnaire to go through these? Uh can this be is this intended first of all from your side to be used independently? I work with myself, I reflect inside myself, or is it more intended to be in a therapeutic process where the therapist guides and leads and knows when to bring in what?

Yeah, good question. So for many, many years I resisted giving the public direct access to it because uh part of why I'm so careful to work with protectors first is because I heard a number of clients back in the day when I didn't know to do that. And so I I saw the consequences of not following the system's pace. And I was afraid that if people did it on their own, that they wouldn't follow the system's pace.

Yes.

Uh more recently, uh we put out a workbook to the public just about a year ago, I think, and we're talking to people about AI apps and things like that. Because I uh I am still interested in changing the paradigm and the culture. And uh one way to do it is through the public. We're also doing trainings for leaders, and uh I'm involved in trying to help AI get sane and regulate it and things like that.

Um and where was I going with that? Um and we kind of figured out how people can try it on their own in a safe way. Okay. And uh that typically involves some people can do it, but most people can't get permission from their protectors to go to their exiles on their own. And so in the foot then in the book, we say, and if you need to do that, then find a IFS therapist.

Yes.

But there's a lot people can do simply by changing their relationship with these protectors that dominate their life and by simply accessing more self and having a more what we call self-led life.

Yes.

And that's what we do. We we have a training program now for coaches, and uh we don't teach them how to heal exiles. No, we teach them how to help leaders find their protectors, find self, become more self-led. So, and there's a lot of value in just that. Why is the focus on leaders? Again, this kind of large goal of changing things. Yes, a big way. Yeah.

So working from top down. Top down, yeah. Yeah. Are there limitations? Um, I asked a similar question earlier, but is there any any group of people you wouldn't recommend IFS to be used for?

If the person lives in a very dangerous environment, uh it isn't that it can't be done, but it's a lot harder. And the prospect of being vulnerable while there's a lot of danger happening is makes it a lot harder for protectors to relax enough to go to go to the exiles. Okay. So um if you're asking about diagnoses, uh we work with most diagnoses at least to start and see what can what's possible.

If somebody's in a psychotic episode, it's very hard to get access anything till the episode is over. But after the episode is over, you can go in and find parts that might be reacting to that psychotic episode or things like that.

Um I've also heard you have been experimenting with psychedelics and uh in combination with IFS. How how is it complementary to each other?

I was skeptical about it for a while because we do fine without it. And then a guy named Michael Mitthoeffer, who's the pri one of the primary researchers at MAPS, which is the big organization pushing legalization, called me because he's an IFS therapist. Okay. And he was he said he'd been keeping track of how often when people took MDMA without any coaching or leading from the facilitator, they spontaneously started doing IFS. They started seeing their parts, they just started talking to their parts, working with their parts.

It was 80%.

Yeah.

He actually wrote a paper on it. And so I got intrigued. Wow. Yeah. And it felt validating. It felt like I'd stumbled onto something that that was real, that people just did when they when they're see for me, the psychedelics puts your managers to sleep and you access a whole lot of self. And when that's the case, it's a big invitation for these exiles to come in and get attention.

Okay.

And that's what we find. So I I got interested and uh was approached by a guy named Phil Wolfson, who's sort of the ketamine maven. And I did some workshops combining IFS and ketamine with him, and then it spun off from him, and now I do it with a woman named Sonny Strasberg. And we do one or two a year, and it's quite amazing the combination.

So you see great, good, positive results.

I can do somebody takes ketamine, and while, like I was saying with the psychotic thing, while they're gone, there's not much you can do. They leave for about 40 minutes. And when when they come back, there's what we call the golden hour or two hours.

Yes.

Where there's a huge amount of self. And in that, I can do in 15, 20 minutes what would take five sessions or even more. Um so that's the the power of it. Okay.

So using these time windows to work on uh IFS systems.

Yeah, and and to get to these parts that they can't get to otherwise. And and then and when I started doing that and saw that we could get to these parts, I was worried about what we call a backlash. Because sometimes when you when you get bypass protectors and you do all this work and you see all these memories that they've been trying to keep you away from, and then they get really angry and they hurt my client or they get mad at me. And I expected a lot of that because the medicine does does that.

Yes.

But we learned to do prep sessions before the medicine where we solicit those parts and their fears, and we talk to them a lot about what's gonna happen, and and they and again, we don't do it without their permission. So I've been trying to bring that to the psychedelics community because it makes a huge difference in the the level of the trip, of the the journey, if the protectors have given permission. And the other thing I'm trying to bring is when somebody's having what you might think of as a bad trip, the facilitator gets scared, the client gets scared.

If you simply go to the person and say, Oh, I see there's this scared part, like if they're having an anxiety attack, I see this this little scared part has come in and is blended with you and needs your help, and ask it to separate a little bit, and people, it'll separate, and then we do a big piece of work with the scared part, and that turns into a huge piece of healing that would have been a bad trip that the person would feel walk away feeling terrible about. So that's another thing I'm trying to bring to the psychedelics community.

Do you think it is ready enough to be implemented uh within a wider range of uh uh people?

Uh yeah, we just came out with a book, another book, uh four authors, I'm the third author, on psychedelic medicine and IFS.

Yeah. I look forward to that. Right. Bringing IFS into life is is already a big legacy you're you're you're having here in the world. Is there anything else you would like to work at in the next years uh which is close to your heart?

You know, I mentioned these uh collective legacy unburdenings, and I'm trying to develop a protocol for that to be used by IFS therapists around the world and to gather big groups together. Because there's also the power of the group, the self-energy of the group facilitates that kind of work similar to the psychedelic.

Yeah.

So I experimented with that. I wrote a book with with a guy named Thomas Hubble who has done it in Israel with groups of a thousand people.

Yeah.

Um, and uh so that's part of the larger vision of trying to unburden these things that are driving so many conflicts everywhere. So I'm working on that. Okay, beautiful. Bringing it to the public, uh, leaders, um bringing it to prisons so that prisoners can do this work on their on themselves while they're in the prison. Why is this close to you? So I've been collaborating with a woman named Fritzi Horseman who will go to a big prison and stand in a group of a hundred prisoners or more in a circle, and she's in the middle, and she'll call out an ace score, which is uh, you know, some trauma that happened that uh they that happened to them, and just call one after another to take a step toward the center of the circle if they had that in in their life, and by the end of the circle, they're all crammed together.

So these are a bunch of traumatized people whose firefighters did extreme things, and then they get locked away in prison. So they're they're like the exiles inside of people. And so anyway, I'm trying to at least help them see that, to help them work with the shame that's been cast onto them by the culture and by the prisons and so on. And uh so I I have a big open a big space in my heart for exiles in general.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, beautiful. Um purpose you want to bring in into the to the world again. How do how do you live privately? Uh can you share that with us today? How sure and what do you do to stay in balance with with the hectic and uh probably still a busy life?

I have my own parts meditation, which I often do. I'll just wake up and lay in bed and check in with my parts and see how they're doing and go over the agenda for the today. I did that today. I'm gonna do this podcast. And so anybody worried about it, anybody need attention? Yeah. Uh and uh by now my parts trust me, so I'll notice them. I I can scan my body and see who's there a lot of the time. I'm I have a condition called aphanasia, which about 3% of us have, okay, where you don't see anything inside.

Like I don't get images at all. Okay. Basically anything. And uh so in contrast to people who can see their parts and it's all living color, I have to do it differently. I do it sensorially, you know, can sense them, I can hear them, I can so I'm doing a lot of that in the beginning. And uh, you know, as as I'm sitting here and parts come up, I'm asking them to relax back and just trust me to stay, keep my heart open. Don't have to take, you know, tense my forehead.

Yeah. I know there's a lot of cameras and all that, but uh you guys I hope they feel safe here. Well they do feel and you have a very nice presence, so they felt safe with you and you were open enough to do a piece of work, and so they really like that. And um so I have that practice, which uh helps a lot, and then we live near my three daughters and their six grandkids, so spent time with them, and um, I'm married to a my second wife who shares this passion with me and presents with me and so on.

So it's not like it used to be where I'm on the road by myself and like she's here and yeah, so you travel together, travel together the activities, yeah. She scans everything I write before I put it out and saves me a lot of hassle. Yeah. So uh, but in terms of hobbies, I don't really have any. I I still play tennis. Oh that's nice, yeah. And that that helps, but yeah.

I have a last question for you. What would you communicate to everyone in the world today? Um, any recommendation, anything you would like to share with them?

You aren't who you think you are. You're much better than you think you are, that there is this essence inside of you that's pure goodness, it's purely called the eight Cs. Calm, confident, connected, creative, compassionate, uh clear, courageous, and uh I always forget what, I think maybe confidence.

Confidence.

Clarity and clear that that's who you really are, and that that's gotten covered over to some degree, or what we call blended with parts that are trying to protect you. But they aren't who they even think they are, or who you think they are either. They're all good, everything in there is good. Yes, and it can all be restored to its naturally valuable state.

Yes, that's that's great. And I I would also say curiosity is is my favorite one here because uh it keeps you going on and learn. Right. Learn about everything around you and learn about yourself, and that can never end.

Totally agree. I often say when there goes courage and there goes creativity and there goes confidence. Yeah, if you can just hold on to curiosity and just stay curious, you can bring them all back and reflect.

Yeah, yeah, beautiful. Dick, thank you so much for um for being here today uh with us, and thank you for all the work you have done and dedicated your life to. And um IFS certainly has uh helped uh a numerous people, uh, thousands around the world, and added value to to so many therapists uh work uh every day. I appreciate that very much, and I'm very curious about any future work you you you may bring up.

Yeah, well, thank you for for your work as well. I learned a little bit about it and uh for your journey for you know seven-year-old having to to immigrate and all all that you went through. Yeah.

Yeah, thank you. I I feel good today with that. Yeah. And uh I try to be there for others as well.

That's why I'm saying that that you walk in your talk. Yeah. It's great.

Thank you very much. Welcome.